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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 




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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTRICT 
OF COLUMBIA. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY THE 



Hon. henry B. F. MACFARLAND, 

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS 
OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 

AT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION, 

DURING THE EXERCISES COMMEMORATIVE OF THE ONE HUN- 
DREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABI^ISHMENT 
OF Tin; 3nAT OF GOVERNMENT ^N THE 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 

WEDNESDAY, DECEL BER THE TWELFTH, 

NINETEEN HUNDRED. 



COMPLIMENTS 

OF THE 

WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE, 
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTRICT 
OF COLUMBIA. 



ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BY THE 

Hon. henry B. F. MACFARLAND, 

PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS 
OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 

AT THE EXECUTIVE MANSION, 

DURING THE EXERCISES COMMEMORATIVE OF THE ONE HUN- 
DREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT 
OF THE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT IN THE 
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER THE TWELFTH, 

NINETEEN HUNDRED. 



COMPLIMENTS 

OF THE 

WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE. 
1900. 



At the Executive Mansion, on the morning of Wednesday, 
December 12, 1900, following a reception by the President of 
the United States to the Governors of the States and Terri- 
tories, the Commissioners of the District of Columbia and 
others, exercises commemorative of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of the establishment of the seat of government in the 
District of Columbia were held in the East Room. Senator 
Eugene Hale, of Maine, Chairman of the Joint Committee on 
the celebration of the Centennial, introduced Mr. John Joy 
Edson, Chairman of the Committee on Exercises at the Ex- 
ecutive Mansion, as Presiding Officer. There were present the 
President of the United States, the members of his Cabinet, 
the Chief Justice of the United States, and the Associate 
Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Presi- 
dent yro tempore of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives, the Commanding General of the Army, the 
Admiral of the Navy, the Senate Committees on the Centennial 
Celebration and the District of Columbia, the House Com- 
mittees on the Centennial Celebration and the District of 
Columbia, the Governors of the States and Territories, the 
Commissioners of the District of Columbia, the members of 
the Committee at Large and of the Citizens' Committee on the 
Centennial Celebration, the members of the Court of Appeals 
and of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, the 
members of the United States Court of Claims, and a number 
of the citizens of the District of Columbia. In the course of 
the exercises the address which follows was delivered by the 
Honorable Henry B. F. Macfarland, President of the Board 
of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISTRICT 
OF COLUMBIA. 



One hundred years ago the District of Columbia became the 
permanent seat of the Government of the United States. For 
the first time the young nation had a capital after twenty-four 
years of wandering from one State to another. Moved by the 
attack of the mob of soldiers on Congress in Philadelphia in 
1783, the makers of the new Government had written in the 
Federal Constitution that the nation should have its own 
capital, in a Federal district to be ceded to the exclusive con- 
trol of Congress. It is the only provision for an independent 
capital ever made by any nation. The North and South 
had contended for the honor of providing this Federal district 
until threats of secession were occasionally heard, and it 
seemed to some that there might soon come to be no need for 
a National Capital. States offered cities, and even capitals, 
and their representatives in Congress fought over these offers. 
At last, with a characteristic compromise, the fathers pro- 
vided that the Federal district should be given to the South, 
while the North should be given its desire in the assumption by 
the nation of the Revolutionary indebtedness of the States. 
Nothing could have been more fortunate than this decision, 
unless it be the determination to leave to George Washington 
the selection of the site for the new capital, and the direction 
of its preparation. His own State of Virginia had offered ten 
miles square. The State of Maryland had done the same, 
and under the authority of Congress Washington had one 
hundred miles of the Potomac, from Williamsport in Maryland 
to the Eastern Branch, where to choose. Washington chose 
with the eye of a surveyor the best site available under the 



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circumstances, and then laid it out with the eye of a seer. All 
that he saw could not come true. The Federal District could 
not contain ''the greatest commercial emporium" of the 
United States which he hoped for here, believing that the 
Chesapeake and Ohio canal, which he had promoted, would, 
as its name suggested, with the Potomac, connect the then 
East and West by the most practicable route to the sea. Nor 
could it contain the national university, which was so dear 
to Washington's heart that he richly remembered it in his will, 
though it was to become a roofless university. But Wash- 
ington saw clearly, what few other public men could see, that 
the young and small, but not feeble nation, would grow and 
expand until it became the greatest of all nations. While 
men were still doubting whether it would last long as a nation 
George Washington was planning, with the assistance of 
Thomas Jefferson and L 'Enfant and Ellicott, a National 
Capital for all time — a- city of magnificent proportions, greater 
and better in design than any other in the world. No other 
city has ever been laid out on such a scale or in such a style. 
Even Washington's reputation for common sense did not save 
it from being called a \'isionary scheme. For more than 
half a century home and foreign wits jested at it as it lay un- 
developed, half village, half capital, through the neglect of 
the General Government. Although it was south of Mason 
and Dixon's line, it was almost in the centre of the narrow 
Union of 1800, as it stretched along the Atlantic coast, but 
after the expansion of its domains, begun under Washington, 
three years later, under Jefferson, crossed the Mississippi, sug- 
gestions of the removal of the capital west of the Alleghenies 
began, and continued, in what seemed an entirely natural way 
to the statesmen meeting in the then Washington, until the 
railroad and the telegraph making communication so much 
quicker, deprived the advocates of removal of their chief argu- 
ment. 

The Federal City, as Washington called it, the City of 



Washington, as the Commissioners and Congress inevitably 
called it, is Washington's prediction that the nation would 
live for centuries, and would grow to the full need of such 
a capital. It is most appropriate that we begin this celebra- 
tion almost under the shadow of the Washington Monument, 
that unique structure which practically niarks the centre of 
the original District of Columbia, and in the President's House 
which so interested Washington, and is the only public build- 
ing completed in 1800 that is still standing. (For, while Con- 
gress, in the preliminary legislation provided only for a Fed- 
eral district (though it afterwards ratified the preparations 
for a Federal city made by Washington), the city, named for 
him, has always been more prominent than the District in the 
world's eye, and now that they are so nearly coterminous, the 
capital will be more and more known by its great founder's 
name ; not, however, as Washington City, but as the City of 
Washington. ) 

It is interesting to read, in the official and unofficial docu- 
ments, of the part which Washington took, with his cus- 
tomary energy, thoroughness and patience in all the details 
of the founding of the Federal district and of the Federal 
city, ^t was he, personally, who made the bargain with the 
nineteen original proprietors, advantageous to them but 
much more so to the Government, and who finally brought 
even the refractory David Burns to terms. It was he, per- 
sonally, who directed the commissioners and the surveyors, 
as they laid out the streets and built buildings, and who medi- 
ated between them when they quarrelled. It was the crown- 
ing work of his Ufe, and perhaps nothing that he did, except 
the Jersey campaign that saved the Revolution, and the 
making of the Constitution that saved the nation, interested 
or pleased him more. It must have grieved Mm that he 
could not Hve to see the actual estabhshment of the National 
Government in the city that had been named for him. He 
died in December, and, /under the act of Congress passed ten 



8 

years before, the National Government began its removal 
from Philadelphia in May. By July the six executive de- 
partments of that day were all in full working order here. 
By November, President Adams, after a visit of inspection 
in June, was occupying this house, and Congress was in ses- 
sion preparatory to the regular session in December. The 
Supreme Court having adjourned in August until February, 
did not meet here in 1800. But through the address of Presi- 
dent Adams in Congress, and the responses of the Senate and 
the House, it was officially declared in November that the 
seat of Government had been established here.y These formal 
announcements and the addresses exchanged by President 
Adams and the citizens are full of gratitude for the fact that 
the National Government had at last a home of its own. 
/Privately, there was much complaining over the discomforts 
of the new city. The letters of Mrs. Adams show what was 
thought of the President's house by his family. There were 
similar criticisms of the unfinished Capitol, while Senators 
and Representatives complained of the places where they 
had to board, and all agreed in denouncing the wretched 
roads which were called streets. Besides the construction of 
the few public buildings at a cost of a million dollars, given 
by Maryland and Virginia or raised by the sale of lots, and 
the outlining of the few streets, little had been done by the 
Government in the ten years of preparation, and less propor- 
tionately had been done by private individuals. The Gov- 
ermnent had no money to spare for such work from its scanty 
treasure, and there were only a few thousand people here] 
There had been a good deal of speculation in the new-made 
real estate lots, but there had been comparatively little build- 
ing on them. It is not strange that the members of the Gov- 
ernment, and of the Diplomatic Corps, looked back regret- 
fully from the crude capital to the comforts and pleasures of 
Philadelphia. If Congress had then begun to provide for the 
gradual improvement of the streets and parks reserved by 



Washington as the property of the nation, which owned more 
than half of the new city, it would have carried out the plan 
of its founder as he doubtless intended should be done. But 
Congress left almost all that work to the few thousand in- 
habitants, who were also expected to provide most of the 
cost of police and fire protection, and other municipal services, 
while Congress practically confined its appropriations to the 
construction, repair and maintenance of the Government 
buildings and their surroundings^ ; It was impossible for the 
people of Washington to sustain this burden, 'which was not 
shared by their neighbors of Georgetown and Alexandria, 
and as the size of the Government, and with it the population 
and needs of the city increased, its municipal affairs went 
from bad to worse. Guided by their admirable mayors (at 
first appointed by the President, but afterwards elected, first 
by councils and later by the people assisted by councils), the 
Washingtonians doubtless did their best to perform what was 
impossible, but of course failed. Even when Congress recog- 
nized this failure and provided for some of its indebtedness, it 
( made no material change in the arrangement for nearly three- 
quarters of a century. 'Indeed, it provided no form of gov- 
ernment for the entire District of Columbia until 1871, and 
no permanent form of government for it until 1878, although 
in 1801 it did establish a judicial system for it. Washington 
and Georgetown, and Alexandria, (until grown tired of the 
unreciprocal arrangement she induced the nation in 1846 to 
let Virginia take back the territory south of the Potomac,) 
had each a separate municipal government, while a levy 
court of justices of the peace in Washington county, and a 
county court of justices of the peace in Alexandria county, 
looked after the regions outside of the towns. The United 
States, owning more than half of the real estate of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, was for nearly three-fourths of the century 
like a visitor rather than a citizen, paying no taxes, and mak- 
ing but small direct contributions to meet the expenses of the 



10 

/ City of Washington, or of the District of Columbia. It spent 
■ over ninety million dollars in the District in that time on 
public buildings and their surroundings, and occasional 
contributions to local objects, but it left the citizens to carry 
out the rest of Washington's plans and to maintain local 
government. Vjt was not until after the Civil War had made 
the National Capital known to the whole country and en- 
deared to two-thirds of it as never before, it was not until it 
had been contended for by the bravest armies ever arrayed 
in battle, that the national interest in it induced Congress to 
assume the nation's share of its government and its burden. 
The National Government ceased to have a transient feel- 
ing, and the talk of the removal of the capital west of the 
Mississippi could, for the first time, be treated humorously. 
The hundreds of thousands of men whom the demands of war 
first brought to Washington came from all the States and 
Territories. Many of them went home again to tell the people 
how homely Washington was, yet how well worth fighting for ; 
many remained as citizens, while others gave their lives that 
it might continue to be the capital of the United States. 
From these men sprang its new life. 
— " (The history of the District of Columbia falls naturally into 
two chapters. The first covers the seventy-one years in which 
it had no real existence. It was neither dead nor alive, al- 
though it had a name to live. For forty-six years the cities of 
Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria lived independently, 
but in more or less harmony within the limits of the District 
of Columbia. Then Alexandria withdrew, while Washington 
and Georgetown lived on the same terms for twenty-five years 
more, but with constantly increasing community of interest. 
Washington, as the actual seat of Government, naturally 
grew as the nation grew, and much more rapidly than its older 
neighbors. With a selected population, representing from 
the beginning the best elements of the whole country, brought 
together largely in connection with the National Government, 



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which at first boasted of long tenure of office, Washington de- 
veloped a local life unique in character. It shared with 
Georgetown a peculiarly refined and cultivated society, and an 
especially intelligent citizenship. It had a cosmopolitan 
tone and view before the days of constant and general world- 
travelling. It had the consciousness of being distinguished 
by the presence of the National Government and by events 
in the country's history. Members of the Diplomatic Corps 
and European travellers who wrote about the National Capital 
in the first half of the century admitted all this, even when 
they made sharp criticisms of its physical appearance and 
temporary defects in comfort and convenience. It is easy 
to see, in the letters and reminiscences of the Wasliingtonians 
of that time, that life here had a flavor and interest not found 
in any other American city. Washingtonians thought 
nationally more than the people of other cities, and showed a 
peculiar pubhc spirit as they endeavored to meet the obligations 
which the neglect of the National Government imposed upon 
them in peace and in war. To meet the local needs a con- 
siderable commercial and" manufacturing interest developed 
with the growth of the city, and gradually the taxable wealth 
increased so that by 1860 it amounted to $547 per capita. 

The Civil War wrought great changes here. For the second 
time the whole District of Columbia w^as recognized in practical 
legislation by the creation of a metropolitan police force. The 
exigencies of the war times compelled in other ways the rec- 
ognition of the fact that there was a District of Columbia. 
But Congress was too busy to take up any general scheme for 
its improvement until ten years later when, by the act of 
February 21, 1871, it created a territorial form of government 
with a Governor and a Legislature, the Governor and the 
upper Chamber to be appointed by the President, together 
with a Board of Public Works and a Board of Health, while 
the House of Delegates was to be elected by the male citizens. 

With this act begins the second chapter of the District's 



12 

history and its real existence under a substantial government. 
In three years the District was transformed, largely through 
the energy and enterprise of one man in the new government. 
All that should have been done toward the improvement of 
the District, and especially the City of Washington, according 
to Washington's plan in seventy years, was done in half that 
many months. The District was saved from being, like the 
then unfinished Washington Monument, a disgrace rather than 
a credit to the great founder. It was literally redeemed and 
given beauty for ugliness, and wealth for poverty. But the 
first work was done roughly, hastily, though thoroughly, and 
it naturally roused strong opposition, and for the time being 
was misunderstood. / People saw the comparatively large 
indebtedness it created, rather than the incomparably large 
results it ensured, and many of them felt personal resentment, 
as well as righteous anger, against some of the workers. Be- 
tween the private griefs, and the public indignation, and a 
certain amount of political feeling, there was pressure enough 
on Congress to induce it to make a radical change of govern- 
ment in 1874, abolishing the elective franchise, and providing 
temporarily a government by three Commissioners, at the 
same time guaranteeing the interest and principal of the bonds 
issued for the new improvements, and providing for the prep- 
aration of a permanent frame of government, and a plan of 
dividing the payment of expenses between the United States 
and the District of Columbia. Four years later these pledges 
were redeemed in the act of June 11, 1878, which the United 
States Supreme Court has called the ''Constitution of the 
District ". It provided, in place of the Governor and Legisla- 
ture, a board of three Commissioners, to be appointed by the 
President, and to execute the laws of Congress, with the equi- 
table provision that Congress should appropriate for the ex- 
penses half from the District tax funds and half from the 
National Treasury. Although many good citizens have re- 
gretted that in the National Capital taxation without repre- 



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sentation is the principle of government, it is generally ad- 
mitted that for the District of Columbia the present form of 
government is the best possible. ; Under it the District has 
doubled in population and in wealth. Under it it has become 
the most beautiful capital in the world. ' Free from the 
slightest suspicion of scandal, successive Boards of Commission- 
ers of the highest character have administered the affairs of the 
(|)istrict more efficiently and economically than the affairs of 
any other American municipaHty have been administered, 
and to such general satisfaction that there has been no last- 
ing criticism. The compact between the National Govern- 
ment and the people of the District of Columbia for the equal 
division of its expenses has worked so well that no adverse 
comment is now made upon it. ^< 

As the larger patriotism makes the nation dearer than the 
State, so the capital of the nation claims the allegiance of the 
citizen of every other city, even above that which he gives to 
his own city. This is recognized in the growing desire of our 
countrymen everywhere that the needs of the National 
Capital shall be generously met. They agree that no niggard 
hand should minister to the nation's city, and that regardless 
of outlay, save that it shall be wise, she shall be kept the most 
beautiful capital in the world. 

/After twenty-two years of experience the present govern- 
rnent is recognized as being, in the language of the act of 1878, 
the "permanent form of government" for the District, or in 
the language of the United States Supreme Court in 1890, 
"the final judgment of Congress as to the system of a govern- 
ment which should obtain. 'j/ Like all human systems, it has 
its imperfections in theory and in practice, but for its purpose it 
comes nearer to an ideal standard than any other of its kind. 
/Its greatest virtue is that it is distinctly a government by 
pubHc opinion. ' The unusually high intelligence of the citizens 
of the District, and their remarkable interest and acti\'ity in 
the conduct of its affairs, make them its real rulers, under the 
constitutional authority of the President and Congress. 



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The very character of the District of Columbia as the seat 
of the National Government makes a part of its life the history 
of that Government in the century now closing — the most 
remarkable since the first of our era. Every President, ex- 
cept George Washington, has performed the duties of his 
great office, the greatest in the world, within these walls. 
Every Congress since the fifth has done its work in the Capitol. 
There, too, the Supreme Court of the United States has ren- 
dered all its decisions since the day when John Marshall be- 
came its Chief Justice. Simply to mention the names of John 
Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and 
James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, 
and then of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, brings 
before the mind a throng of great deeds done in this very house. 
Think of the expansion of the country by successive acts of 
the Presidents, beginning with Jefferson. Think of the nego- 
tiations with foreign powers, of the war-making and of the 
peace-making, of the formulation of far-reaching policies, and 
of all the dealings with Congress by President after President. 
Think what went on here under President Lincoln alone, 
when the eyes of the whole world were for the first time fixed 
upon the Capital of the United States. Time would fail to 
tell the mere story of the great Presidents who have made 
history in the District of Columbia. 

When we go to the Capitol this afternoon we shall be re- 
minded of the great Senators and Representatives and Judges 
who have won lasting fame by their services to the country 
here. Their memorable acts, speeches and opinions are 
events in our history as well as in the history of the country. 
These illustrious men who have made, executed and inter- 
preted our national laws for a hundred years, belong to the 
District of Columbia as well as to the States that sent them 
here. They have been the dominant element in the life of 
the District of Columbia, and have given its society a peculiar 
character. 



15 

The District of Columbia, coming to the manhood of States, 
at the opening of the twentieth century, looks forward to a 
larger and nobler career as the Capital of the nation which has 
grown in its short life to be the greatest in the world. At the 
beginning of the nineteenth century it was the Capital of an 
ill-defined quarter of the present United States, with a popula- 
tion one-fifteenth that of the present, and despised by Europe. 
The flag waved nowhere on the Gulf of Mexico, or west of the 
Mississippi, and only in scattered settlements west of the 
Alleghenies. The locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone, 
and almost all the other great mechanical inventions were yet 
to come. The country and the Government were alike poor. 
There was no American literature, there was no American art, 
there was no American music, there was no American press. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century the District of 
Columbia is the Capital of a mighty nation whose flag brightens 
and controls the far Pacific as well as the near Atlantic, that 
holds the headship of this hemisphere and leads among the 
powers of the world, all coveting its favor; enriched at home 
with the material blessings which its myriad inventors and 
industrial chieftains have bestowed upon all mankind, and 
proud of the literary, artistic and musical achievements of its 
sons and daughters. Made one out of many in the fires of civil 
war, and strengthened by their tempering, it is even more than 
the Father of his country believed that in a century it could 
become. Standing here in its splendid Capital, looking back 
with pride on its wonderful past, it can face the future with 
hope, in spite of difficulties and dangers, in a confidence born 
of reverent and trustful devotion still given to Him who has 
been our dwelling place in all generations, and to whom a 
thousand j^ears are but as yesterday when it is passed. 



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